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"The Ring is like opium drugs for the Wagnerians!" From Michael Roddy's interview with Maestro Fischer on Reuters:

(Reuters) - Trust a Hungarian Jewish conductor to look beyond Richard Wagner's notorious anti-semitism and infamous personal life to mount a Wagner festival on a tight budget that has become a magnet for Wagner lovers the world over.

"I don't know any other composer who had this intense effect that makes people crazy," conductor Adam Fischer, 62, told Reuters in an interview on the last day of the two-week-long "Wagner in Budapest" festival at the city's modern and acoustically crystalline Palace of Arts concert hall.

"This is like opium drugs for the Wagnerians - and there are no 'Mozarteans' or 'Beethovenians' who are so dependent."

Next year will see a worldwide frenzy for the bicentenary of the birth of Hitler's favorite composer, with performances of his epic - and, at 16 hours, epically long - "Ring"cycle of four operas, and other musts from the Wagner back catalogue like "Parsifal", "Lohengrin" and "Die Meistersinger", everywhere from Melbourne, Australia, to Seattle, Washington, and at dozens of other venues across the globe.